Laura Karpman

Laura Karpman has collected Grammy and Emmy honors while securing an Academy Award nomination for her work as a composer whose inventive scores traverse jazz idioms, vigorous orchestral writing, contemplative chamber pieces, and additional genres. A native of Los Angeles, she entered television scoring in the late 1980s and accumulated credits on more than a dozen productions before completing her first theatrical feature, the 1995 romantic comedy Lover’s Knot. Her initial Emmy arrived in 2003 for the pilot episode of the science-fiction series Odyssey 5, after which she maintained a strong presence in science-fiction and adventure projects through contributions to Steven Spielberg’s Taken in 2002, multiple entries in the EverQuest video-game series, the 2009 documentary Whiz Kids, and the 2016 romance Paris Can Wait. Off screen during this period she created the multimedia opera Ask Your Mama, which received its world premiere at Carnegie Hall in 2009 with Jessye Norman and the Roots. Karpman entered the Marvel Cinematic Universe as composer for the 2021 animated series What If…? and the 2022 series Ms. Marvel; the latter earned her sixth and seventh Emmy Awards for its theme and dramatic underscore, directly leading to her assignment on the 2023 feature The Marvels. Her inventive, piano-driven score for that same year’s American Fiction, shaped by Thelonious Monk’s approach and centered on a character named Monk, brought her first Oscar nomination for Best Score.

Born Laura Anne Karpman in Southern California on March 1, 1959, she was raised by an artist who immersed her in classical and jazz recordings while she was still in utero and who encouraged her musical development. She received formal vocal training in childhood, began composing at age seven, and later studied with William Bolcom and Leslie Bassett at the University of Michigan, where she attended Ella Fitzgerald’s 1979 campus concert and met the singer backstage. After earning a Bachelor of Music in Ann Arbor she pursued graduate work at the Juilliard School in Manhattan, completing both a master’s degree and a doctorate in music composition while working with Milton Babbitt.

Returning to Los Angeles, Karpman scored theatrical productions and wrote musicals before entering television in earnest with the 1989 TV movie My Brother’s Wife, which starred John Ritter. A consistent flow of television assignments followed, encompassing additional made-for-TV films and documentary series such as World of Discovery and Nature. Her feature-film debut arrived with Lover’s Knot in 1995. Among subsequent varied projects were the 1999 television biopic Dash and Lilly, the 1999 romance The Annihilation of Fish, and the Emmy-nominated documentary series Egypt Beyond the Pyramids.

The year 2002 marked a notable expansion, bringing Karpman’s sole-composer credits on the television remake of Stephen King’s Carrie, Steven Spielberg’s science-fiction series Taken, and the time-travel series Odyssey 5. For Odyssey 5 she received her first Emmy in the category of Outstanding Music Composition for a Series (Dramatic Underscore). Further science-fiction assignments ensued, including the 2004 video game EverQuest II and its sequels; her second Emmy followed in 2007 for the anthology series Masters of Science Fiction in the Outstanding Music Composition for a Miniseries, Movie or a Special category.

During the same span she composed the multimedia opera Ask Your Mama, drawn from Langston Hughes’s cycle of poems, and collaborated with soprano Jessye Norman and the Roots on its 2009 Carnegie Hall premiere. Screen projects in this era encompassed the 2009 documentary Whiz Kids, the 2009 thriller The Tournament, and the 2011 video game Kung Fu Panda 2. She shared composing duties with Raphael Saadiq on the 2013 holiday film Black Nativity while continuing to balance television, film, and concert-hall commissions through the remainder of the decade. Notable film scores from those years include the 2016 romance Paris Can Wait and the 2017 documentary Step. She also wrote the score for the 2019 Discovery series Why We Hate, which yielded both a soundtrack album and her third and fourth Emmy Awards for its theme and dramatic underscore.

An additional Emmy arrived for the 2020 series Lovecraft Country, shared with Saadiq in the Outstanding Music Composition for a Series category. In 2021 Karpman joined the Marvel Universe with the animated series What If…?, which led to her suspenseful yet playful orchestral scoring for the 2022 miniseries Ms. Marvel and the connected 2023 theatrical release The Marvels. That same year brought the release of the satirical film American Fiction, whose puckish, piano-centric score drew primary inspiration from Thelonious Monk and earned Karpman her first Academy Award nomination for Best Score. At that point she was preparing the fully staged premiere of her opera Balls, which dramatizes the 1973 Battle of the Sexes in tennis, while also developing a new opera addressing pandemic themes.